Feel The Burn
How we’re finding our way in today’s obsessive workout culture.
Bridget Turro was scrolling on TikTok in November of 2023 when she saw something alarming. It was a clip of herself, taking a yoga sculpt class at CorePower, in the background of someone else’s video. She’d noticed someone filming during class but didn’t think anything of it until a few days later, when her “For You” page algorithm served the video back to her. “It just made me feel insecure and like I can’t trust going to these places and not being recorded,” she says. The comments on the video made it worse: “There were a few comments saying like, damn, the girl in the back is kind of big,” Turro remembers. She hasn’t been back to CorePower since.
Fitness influencers have been posting their workouts to all types of social platforms for well over a decade, and content creators have long filmed their day-to-day lives, trips to Erewhon, drinks with friends, dinners at buzzy restaurants, and glamorous brand events. We’re used to seeing birth stories, divorce drama, and petty hometown sagas online. But these days, the most polarizing content isn’t whether or not you think influencers are boring or your political views. It’s filming yourself working out in a public gym.
After lockdown, when gyms and studios reopened, the gymfluencers flocked to these public spaces and brought their cameras with them. Maureen Flynn, a Pilates teacher, noticed a shift around 2021. “I literally saw someone filming in class once prior to 2020,” she says. Delaney Bader, a fitness instructor at Poe, a boutique studio in Fair Haven, New Jersey, noticed a pandemic shift too. “I would have been mortified pre-COVID to prop up my phone, especially in the front row of a workout class, and start filming myself,” she says. “Now, it is so prevalent. I don’t think you’re gonna go to a single workout class in the city or surrounding areas and not see at least one person filming themselves, unless the studio has an explicit no-phone policy.”
Kimberly* has been going to the same studio in Manhattan since 2023. In the first few weeks of this year, she noticed more people filming in class but wasn’t bothered by it — until, like Turro, she saw herself in the background of a stranger’s video while scrolling on TikTok. “To me, it was jarring,” she says of the “unflattering” video posted in March. “I just felt so large, and I literally spiraled for a week,” Kimberly says. “Just my body … like I don’t want to see that. It just made me feel bad.”
After the incident, Kimberly noticed that an acquaintance of hers from the studio also started propping up her phone during their workouts to bank some content. “She started filming, and I was behind her looking very exhausted and tired,” she says. When her acquaintance asked for permission to post the video, Kimberly didn’t know what to do. “Am I allowed to say no? What does that say about me? Am I the one that’s insecure because I don’t want to be out here? I’m a very private person. I barely post on Instagram.” Kimberly has since shifted to working out at one of her studio’s other locations, where she sees fewer people filming. “I just try my very best to see who’s in front of me and take note, but it’s hard because they’re so sneaky with it,” she says. “They’re not looking out for you; they’re looking out for themselves.”
In fairness, there are some legitimate reasons for filming and posting a workout video. Some people might be checking their form or just trying to track their fitness progress. For others, it’s their job. Bader, the instructor at Poe, records herself teaching at the front of the room and often posts the videos on her TikTok and Instagram. When she began filming herself in 2022, it functioned as an accountability exercise. “It made me show up to classes that I didn’t necessarily want to show up to,” she says. “Once you’re in class and you’re filming, you’re gonna stay in a move a little bit longer, you’re gonna do a few more reps then you might normally do. You might lift a little bit heavier.” Now, filming is a significant part of her work life.
Bader has been a full-time instructor for two years, and says she enjoys watching content from other instructors and class attendees too. “A lot of the movements we’re doing are based on the same principles, and it’s cool to see creative, unique spins on moves that I might be teaching,” she says. For her, posting is also just a good business strategy. “People come up to me after class and tell me they’ve driven hours to come to the studio,” she says. Once, someone even flew all the way from Australia to come to Poe, just because they saw Bader’s videos on TikTok. “It’s so incredible and honestly shocking to see how many people you can reach with your little phone and your little videos on your little app.”
Fitness and lifestyle influencer Cole Mattera attends daily classes at Poe where she props her phone up, usually on her Stanley tumbler, and films her workouts. She began sharing her fitness content because she wanted to demonstrate to her friends, who have started to get married and have children, that she’s thriving in her own lane. “This is my thing,” she says. “My mom was really sick with cancer, and my parents were going through an insane divorce … I was trying to show, like, this is my life, and this is what I’m achieving.” Mattera posted her first workout to TikTok two years ago, and overnight the clip hit 10 million views. Now, she’s a full-time content creator, and her fitness clips are consistently the highest-performing videos on her profile.
Click here to preview your posts with PRO themes ››
When Mattera is in class, she’s usually situated at the front of the room, and most of her videos feature people working out in the background. Even so, she says she’s never been asked to stop filming by anyone who’s ended up behind her. “In fact, there are people that will sprint into the room to try to get behind me because everyone knows that’s my spot,” she says. “People will fight for the spot behind me to try and be in the back of my video.”
Similarly, Bader says she doesn’t ask for consent before filming but that she’ll stop recording if someone asks. “My classes are always full, and I have mostly regular repeat clients,” Bader tells me. “I would imagine that if they really had an issue with it, they wouldn’t be coming back.”
There’s a difference, though, between asking people for consent before filming and waiting for someone to be bold enough to tell you to stop. And who wants to spend their workout worrying about being caught in 4K with a red face and pit stains? Plenty of Reddit snarkers would say that people who film in class often behave in ways that are entitled and disrespectful. “Workout classes in NYC are too expensive to be spending an entire hour in discomfort because a selfish influencer is filming you for views and body-checking purposes,” says one Redditor.
“Everyone is trying to be an influencer at the expense of other paying customers and it sucks,” says Taylor Paré, a content creator based in New York. “Fitness should be a place of empowerment and safety, not exploitation and entitlement. Putting a stranger online without their consent is potentially putting that person’s life at risk.” Influencers who record strangers without considering their safety, she adds, are out of touch with the harsh realities some might be experiencing outside class. “They could have an abusive ex-boyfriend or a stalker, maybe they’re in the witness-protection program, you literally never know,” Paré says. “Then add the fact that these people are sweating and struggling while attempting to get stronger and feel better about themselves and be healthier. Just because you wanna put your whole life online doesn’t mean the person next to you does.”
A few influencers have already learned this the hard way. Morgan J., a fitness instructor in Los Angeles, built a social following with her workout-review series, “Moves With Mojo.” At the start, she wasn’t worried about capturing the people around her or distracting them from their own routines. But once some of her followers pointed out that a gym should be a “safe space” for everyone, she started to rethink her strategy. “I understand the criticism,” she says. “I make a concerted effort in all of my videos to only make sure I’m capturing myself if it’s something that I’m planning to post.” Now, if there are other people in the background, she’ll either put an emoji over their face or delete the clip entirely.
The first step toward making people more comfortable, adds Flynn, would be to ban phones in studios altogether. She’s been vocal about having a strict no-phones policy in her class for the three years she’s been teaching. “My most important job is to keep my clients safe,” she says. “You don’t know who has trauma. There’s so much discourse about not filming children, why do we feel free to do it to other people that we don’t know?”
She also says she “would fucking flip out” if someone filmed in her class and not just for her clients’ sake: The exercise routines that she creates are her intellectual property. “I don’t care if you’re a regular person with 800 Instagram followers or if you’re big on social media,” she says. “Are you recording my class; are you then using it for your own benefit? Are you putting it online and making money off of that? What’s happening with my work?”
Paré suggests that studios should make their own decisions about what’s allowed in class, possibly implementing a “strike policy” with monetary consequences, similar to what happens when you’re charged a fee for skipping class. For people who want to record during a workout, there are already plenty of options to consider: Film in the back of the room or a secluded area where no one’s in your shot, or head to phone-friendly gyms like Core24 in Charlotte, North Carolina; Onyx Fitness on Long Island; and the elusive Alo Gym in New York and Los Angeles. There’s also one golden rule that all parties should follow at the gym and all other public spaces: Don’t be an asshole.
*Name has been changed to protect privacy.
